In April of 2017, Shane Goldmacher reported in Politico noted that Justice Anthony Kennedy and President Trump had a conversation after Trump’s first speech to Congress that was picked up by boom microphones.

Here is the conversation they had, as quoted in Politico:

“Say hello to your boy,” Trump said, “Special guy.” “Your kids have been very nice to him,” Kennedy replied. “Well,” Trump said, “they love him, and they love him in New York.”

Kennedy’s son Gregory Kennedy worked at NASA in the early days of the Trump administration, as one of the political appointees the president chose to serve as his eyes and ears at major federal agencies. (That group of appointees was described by ProPublica in March 2017 and revised in August of the same year. ProPublica reported that Gregory Kennedy was appointed January 20, Inauguration Day.)

Gregory Kennedy attended Stanford law School with Trump technology advisor Peter Thiel, and his company, Disruptive Technology Advisors, has worked with Thiel’s company, Palantir.

Justin Kennedy is an associate of Donald Trump, Jr., through New York real estate. He has worked for Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank. Financial Times reported in August 2017:

“Justin Kennedy, a trader who arrived from Goldman to become one of Mr Trump’s most trusted associates over a 12-year spell at Deutsche, is the son of a Supreme Court justice.”

It seems that there are a number of family-financial connections between the Trump and Kennedy families. Perhaps Justice Kennedy should have recused himself from Supreme Court cases involving the Trump administration.

Tuesday Justice Kennedy wrote a concurrence for the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision to uphold Trump’s travel ban on people from seven countries (Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen). Wednesday, he announced that he will retire from the Court at the end of July.

Three members of the Trump transition team - Michael, Flynn, Steve Bannon, and Jared Kushner - met January 5, 2017 with Jordan’s King Abdullah II at the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan. At the time, soon-to-be national Security Advisor Flynn was promoting a $400 billion deal to build nuclear reactors in the Middle East, including Jordan.

According to Buzzfeed, they greeted the king at the hotel and then took off with him in a fleet of SUVs for an undisclosed location.

This part of the article is particularly interesting:

“People close to the three Trump advisers say that the nuclear deal was not discussed. But a federal official with access to a document created by a law enforcement agency about the meeting said that the nuclear proposal, known as the Marshall Plan, was one of the topics the group talked about.”

This means that the group was under surveillance by U.S. law enforcement at the time of the meeting.

The plan included using a Russian firm currently under U.S. sanctions to run security at the plants.